Ticker Talk

A small brokerage owned by a National Assn. of Securities Dealers board member plans to file a lawsuit today seeking to halt the group’s $1.5-billion plan to make the Nasdaq Stock Market a private company. “The NASD is trying to snatch Nasdaq away from the membership and hand it to the large firms,” said NASD board member Alan Davidson, owner of Zeus Securities brokerage in Smithtown, N.Y. The suit will ask a judge to issue a temporary restraining order that would immediately halt a brokers’ vote Friday on the Nasdaq plan, Davidson said. The vote is to be held among the NASD’s 5,500 member firms, most of which have fewer than 10 employees. A spokesman for the NASD declined to comment.